Well, I survived another challenging quarter. This was my first one as a Teaching Assistant at UCLA and it took some getting used to balancing teaching responsibilities, my own research, and family life. Teaching took the bulk of my time this quarter. Though I know this is a life long struggle for academics, I will be trying some tricks as time goes by for better balancing.

Aside from the time management challenge, teaching Western Civ this quarter was a fulfilling experience. I had a great bunch of students who asked interesting questions and offered creative insights when reading ancient texts. And it was, of course, a great learning experience for me to think synthetically about a vast span of history. Puts things in perspective. I’m looking forward to doing the same class with a different professor next quarter, since it will have some continuity but also allow for filling in a few gaps that the other class didn’t cover.

I finished up a paper for the end of the quarter in Bartchy’s Paul of Tarsus seminar. I decided to do Paul and empire, then I narrowed down into First Thessalonians. I did some work with social identity in First Thessalonians, as well as imperialism and eschatology. That, too, was a learning experience. I feel like I’m an archaeologist on a long, tedious dig. Each paper reveals a little tiny bit more that I hadn’t noticed before. I really appreciate the way Douglas Campbell put it in his recent tome: “And as I began to try to write, a frustrating experience began to unfold — repeatedly. I would begin to articulate my concerns as best I could, painfully compose a chapter or two of prose, and then the argument would break down. It was as if a wave would run each time a little further up the beach before it would break — which it always did — and run back to sea” (xxv). Not that I presume to be writing something something of the magnitude of Campbell’s work, but the dissertation I have in mind has to deal with some very nebulous concepts and methods. It’s a very slow process trying to get a handle on them.

Next quarter, I’ll be doing a graduate seminar with Ronald Mellor on Roman Religion. That should be a fun class with all my colleagues in the ancient field at UCLA (many of us are TAing together) and a couple other Bartchy students. I’ve been getting interested in exploring voluntary associations, so I think I might do a paper in that area for Mellor’s seminar. I’m gearing up for it by reading Philip Harland‘s new book, kindly sent along to me by T & T Clark for review (Thanks, Abby!!).

Many of my dreams are variations on the same themes. It’s the day of the final exam and I realize that I’m enrolled in a course that I haven’t attended all semester. Some scary person is chasing me through some weird video-game-like maze (this sometimes includes flying). But last night I had a new kind of dream that must somehow be related to my new status as a graduate student and the fact that I have finished my Fuller Seminary course work so recently.

I had this dream that I was enrolled in a Fuller class, taught by Marianne Meye Thompson, on top of my UCLA classes. I walked into the classroom and Prof. Thompson yelled out in front of the entire class calling me a cheater. Apparently, she found a sentence in a paper or final exam that was very similar to a sentence in some book that I had never heard of. She actually named the title and author, neither of which I recognized (my subconscious brain made up a title and author?).

Some other things happened. There may have been a chase of some kind, to connect it to my more common dreams. But eventually, she gave me a final challenge to fess up. I told her that I really didn’t do it. Then she said my whole Fuller degree would be revoked. Because it seemed to her that I had plagiarized, I wouldn’t be able to get my M.Div. that I have worked so hard on for three years.

Somehow, I found a way to get a hold of the piece of writing, which turned out to be a final exam essay. The questionable sentence was in a paragraph about a movie that I related to whatever the topic was (something I don’t think I’ve ever done in a final exam). I finally convinced some nameless higher-up person that this was some inconsequential movie description and that there weren’t many ways of describing the movie anyway. In the end, it all worked out. I got to keep my Fuller degree after all that stress and my name was cleared.

I find my brain fascinating. I should note that Marianne Meye Thompson is nothing like this in real life . I took five classes with her, so that’s probably why she was my dream’s representative for Fuller Seminary.